A second two-part premiere in as many days! How exciting. This one, however, is leagues ahead of the last. ID: Invaded is about a brilliant detective (they use that exact phrase multiple times) named Sakaido, who helps catch murderers by entering their mind palaces (here called “id wells”, and are specifically born from the murderer’s intent to kill) and literally piecing together details of the crime and identity of the killer, while a team of analysts study details of the id well from the outside and field investigators follow up on leads.
Sakaido is obviously the star of the mystery, but the additional cast help to provide context for the case at hand while also making it clear that the investigation is a team effort, doing most of the heavy lifting in regards to actually disseminating information to the audience; while Sakaido is by no means a slouch in that department (he actually manages to figure things out fairly quickly given the situations he finds himself in) his own investigative efforts are understandably skewed by the perception of the id well he’s in, and its up to the team of analysts to help make sense of it all, with Sakaido serving to actually give them the puzzle pieces.
The way these first two episodes play with the mechanical concept of the id well is also fun, and Sakaido using his own disconnected arm as a grappling hook to move around and pull rooms together is absolutely a highlight. How the actual technology behind id wells works is handwaved as “cognition particles”, but there wouldn’t really be much of a show without the central conceit of the mind palaces so its, like, whatever.
The pacing for this show is…… brisk, but not enough for it to really be an issue. Most of the cast spent these first two episodes just kind of shouting information, but a few of them did manage to establish personalities for themselves, and since the show has a fairly large cast introduced all at once I’m not really expecting it to get to all of them right away. Animation’s good, even if the 3D compositing is a bit obvious in a couple shots, but it doesn’t distract from anything so its fine. The score and direction are also solid. I’m gonna stick with this one, even though the concept of cops wriggling around in your thought space is creepy as hell. Wriggling. Like woooooorms.
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